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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28044060">Oncoming</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/HenryMercury/pseuds/HenryMercury'>HenryMercury</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Killing Eve (TV 2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, Dark Eve Polastri, Eve-focused, F/F, Gen, Graphic Depictions of Meat, Murder, Post-Season/Series 03, Retail and Hospitality work, The Villaneve is minimal, no happy ending, season 4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-11 00:55:41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,824</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28044060</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/HenryMercury/pseuds/HenryMercury</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>She is Eve, thief of forbidden knowledge. Eve, who let death into the garden.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Eve Polastri/OFCs, Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>55</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Oncoming</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So this fic has been in the works for nearly as long as Death Wears McQueen. There are call notes jotted down at the end of my word doc from phone conversations more than seven months ago.</p><p>I've run much closer to my non-fanfic writing tendencies here, too, so <b>if you want a happily ever after this is not the fic you're looking for. Note that this is a very Eve-focused story. It involves Villaneve, but I wouldn't call it a Villaneve story.<b></b></b></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Eve walks.</p><p>She thinks about Villanelle behind her.</p><p>It’s <em>all</em> she can think about.</p><p>In front of her the bridge stretches on, going nowhere she cares for.</p><p>It would have been easier if Villanelle <em>had</em> told her to jump; falling, at least, Eve understands. The heart-pounding out-of-controlness of it. The means that—for a weightless moment—justifies the end.</p><p>But Eve has already fallen, hasn’t she? Nosedived again and again in an exhilarating, sickening spiral. The trudging footpath of her future <em>is </em>the end of that fall. The fatal smack of deceleration. She turns, watches as Villanelle does the same, eyes wet and smile sad. A goodbye.</p><p>Eve’s bones may not be broken, but hitting the ground has still never been less fun.</p><p> </p><p>÷</p><p> </p><p>Eve brings the boning knife down harder than necessary. Again. Her bare hands are damp with the slick of raw meat. She tears one leg from the carcass in front of her, then the other. The flesh of the duck is dark pink underneath its pale, textured skin. Eve’s knife ploughs along the breastbone, then dips inside the incision to carve a soft slab of meat away. She repeats the process on the other side. Sets the legs and breasts aside. Reaches for the next dead thing.</p><p>She scares herself sometimes, when the motions become too mindless. When she comes back to herself mid-fillet and watches her own hands as if from behind a screen. This is when she remembers what they can do—what <em>she </em>can do. How sometimes she can’t resist it, the idea of showing someone how afraid of her they should be.</p><p>And really, if the world didn’t want Eve to think about hurting people, it should have offered her a rebound career outside the hospitality industry.</p><p> </p><p>She is washing up after a late shift when the owner enters the kitchen. He’s wearing a suit and tie, as if to elevate himself above her.</p><p>Eve doesn’t like him, but then she doesn’t particularly like anyone anymore.</p><p>She stays quiet, scrubbing more vigorously at the cutlery in the bottom of the sink. Filthy water splashes against her soiled apron, and her rubber gloves are sticky inside as her hands sweat. She should have clocked off fifteen minutes ago.</p><p>He doesn’t even say anything, just walks up behind her and puts his hand on her hip. Breathes down the back of her neck.</p><p>Eve swivels instinctively, bringing her hands up in front of herself, lashing out against his chest when she finds it altogether too close to her own. The edge of the stainless steel sink juts uncompromisingly into her lower back.</p><p>He is clearly not expecting a fight. Ruddy and indignant, he clutches at her hair, pulling her cap off roughly. He goes for her throat—wide hand closing over the windpipe, blunt fingers digging in. He leans down as if to kiss her.</p><p>Eve’s hands respond more decisively this time. One holds a scouring pad which drips a steady stream onto the floor. She shoves it into his face, suds dirtying his glasses and running into his eyes. Blindly, he presses even harder into her. His body is so heavy. Breathless, Eve’s whole head feels hot and tight. Patterns flare across her vision like static on an old tube TV. Her racing pulse fills the room. In Eve’s other hand is a half-washed carving fork.</p><p>He bleeds out quickly and messily from the series of swift punctures to his upper thigh. Eve watches from behind that imaginary screen while the dark puddle spreads, the shouting quiets and his gaze drifts out of focus. She gasps through it all, throat sore.</p><p>Then, slowly and methodically, she puts the bloodied implement back in the sink. She walks to both of the kitchen’s doors, locking each. She turns the main overhead lights off.</p><p>Disposing of a body isn’t something she’s had to do before, but that doesn’t mean she’s unprepared now push has come to shove.</p><p>The bone saw is on the blunt side, but she manages. The blender is industrial, which improves the process greatly. The floor cleaner is hospital grade, and Eve has been mopping these floors for long enough to know they’ve seen worse.</p><p>The human body reduces to less puree than you’d expect. Load by load she takes the former owner around the back to the shitty staff toilet with the steel bowl and no seat or lid. Load by load, she flushes him down until there’s nothing left. Clothes, wedding band and dismantled mobile phone are mixed in with the day’s offal, bagged and buried deep in the large garbage bin. </p><p>Eve finishes the washing up, then goes home. She takes a long bath, scrubbing her skin with hands that are tired but steady, and feels less afraid than she has in a long time.</p><p>She waits another two weeks to quit. Her regular turtleneck covers the bruising well enough. <em>No</em>, she tells the manager, <em>If he came by that night it must have been after I left.</em></p><p> </p><p>÷</p><p> </p><p>The first woman Eve has sex with is a dark-haired, tattooed girl who offers her a line in a dingy pub bathroom just after midday.</p><p>“No, thanks,” Eve tells her. She’s been drinking since yesterday and it must show. The pack of cigarettes she bought last night is already long gone.</p><p>The girl looks her up and down, then says, “Fancy something else, then?”</p><p>It’s perfunctory: hands shoved down pants, arms in the way, a mouth gasping damply into Eve’s neck. The chewing gum on the graffitied cubicle door is just dry enough to catch at Eve’s hair without sticking in it. It feels dirty and impulsive and Eve bites through her lip when she comes, three slim fingers curling inside her.</p><p>Recalling it in her shitty motel shower that evening, she imagines honey-blonde hair and grey eyes, the syllables gasped into her ear perfumed with Russian diction. It keeps her burning after the hot water runs out, but when she curls up on the warped single bed there’s a nausea low in her gut that has nothing to do with the hangover.</p><p> </p><p>The second woman Eve has sex with is her new boss.</p><p>She recognises the look of interest on Althea’s face as she takes her seat on the other side of the office manager’s desk, so she flirts her way through the job interview. It’s only pragmatic. The older woman isn’t unattractive, either. There’s a sharp edge to her lipstick smile and an alluring brashness to her observations.</p><p>“May and I have been on the lookout for an interesting dinner guest,” Althea informs Eve one afternoon, as her hands flash over the buttons of the high-tech office printer. After much squeaking and chewing of paper it has produced a stack of reports, each automatically stapled across the top left corner. “Do you like soba, Eve?”</p><p>Althea’s wife is an artist—both with food and with paint. May is originally from Nagano, up in the Japanese mountains. The walls of their high-ceilinged apartment are covered in mismatched frames displaying calligraphy, watercolours, graphite drawings.</p><p>“These are pretty much the rejects,” Althea explains. “The best ones sell for hundreds, sometimes thousands.”</p><p>Over dinner they discuss art, which Eve knows little about. Cooking, which she can speak about if not actually <em>do</em>. The Jeanette Winterson novel that May’s lesbian book club has just started reading. Eve is struck by how unaccustomed to dinner parties she’s become. How foreign the idea of a book club now is.</p><p>After clearing the table and loading up the dishwasher, May ties Althea to the bed. Her delicate hands weave the ropes expertly, like she doesn’t have to think about it at all. Like folding origami, Eve thinks, or butchering an animal.</p><p>“I didn’t expect it to be so… pretty,” Eve breathes, looking at the woman before her, clothed only in knots.</p><p>“<em>Kinbaku</em> is an art,” May says, giving Eve a knowing look. “I can teach you a few things, if you’d like.”</p><p>Eve can’t think of any reason to refuse.</p><p> </p><p>The office job is worse than MI5, though. Say what you will about Carolyn’s off-the-books operation, but at least there Eve didn’t have to deal with bullshit invoices and timesheets and filing and formatting other people’s fucking PowerPoint presentations. Being an administrative assistant makes Eve nostalgic for the good old days of being set up to take the fall for high-profile murders.</p><p>She snaps one afternoon—just some ordinary Wednesday. She tells the pushy man on the other end of the phone to piss off, then shreds some reports instead of archiving them; a feeble attempt to share the chaos that roils inside her. Althea fires her and then asks her to dinner in the same breath. Eve raids petty cash and Althea’s biscuit drawer on her way out.</p><p> </p><p>÷</p><p> </p><p>The dress has clearly been worn. Makeup on the collar, grass stains on the backside, a beige coffee spot on the blush satin-look bodice. No tag.</p><p>“It’s really incredibly poor that you people send out faulty items to your online customers,” the woman who has brought the dress in is saying. “If I’d wanted to have to come all the way here I wouldn’t have ordered it online in the first place.”</p><p>“Again, I’m very sorry ma’am,” says Eve. “But you can’t return this without a receipt.”</p><p>It’s late January, and even at peak times the shop is relatively quiet, tucked away in one of the shopping centre’s more obscure nooks. This is the only customer Eve’s had all morning.</p><p>“Would <em>you </em>accept this—” (a pause, as she consults Eve’s name badge) “—Suzy?” The dress is waved in Eve’s face. It smells of sweat. There are yellow patches under the arms.</p><p>“No,” she replies.</p><p>“Exactly. Because this is <em>unacceptable</em>. I’d like to speak to your manager, since you refuse to help me.”</p><p>“I’m sorry ma’am.” Eve grits her teeth. “My manager isn’t in until one o’clock today. If you want—”</p><p>“I don’t <em>want </em>to be putting up with any of this. All I want is to get my refund,” the customer gestures aggressively with her armful of stained faux-satin, “and go about my day. I don’t have time for this.”</p><p>The woman leans forward over the counter. Eve doesn’t step back. Hasn’t done that sort of thing for a while.</p><p>“—simple request, but you’ve made things as difficult as possible just to waste my time. Well? Well done! You’ve lost a customer. I won’t be coming back here.”</p><p>A wet speck lands on Eve’s cheek as the woman goes on. Eve doesn’t bother pretending to listen to any more of the tirade.</p><p>On her way out, the woman pulls a shirt off its hanger and shoves it into her bag. She reaches next for a jacket—the expensive jacket of the season, insofar as anything in the shop is actually expensive. Last time merchandise was lost on Eve’s shift, the already-thin envelope of cash she received at the end of the fortnight was barely there.</p><p>“Excuse me,” she calls.</p><p>The woman looks her right in the face as she stuffs the jacket into her shopping bag. Eve sees her ringed hand falter, her <em>fuck-you </em>smile strain at whatever she sees in Eve’s eyes—but then she’s grabbing a pair of sunglasses too.</p><p>In general, people don’t react to Eve with the correct amount of fear.</p><p>Eve rounds the counter and makes her way through the racks. She’s used to dodging them, and has the advantage of less to carry.</p><p>The woman’s hair is tied in a bun at the back of her head. Eve digs her fingers into it.</p><p>“Hel<em>mph</em>!”</p><p>Eve takes a scarf off the nearest rack. At each end is a pompom. Eve shoves one of the pompoms into the customer’s mouth, winding the length around her straining neck.</p><p>“Let’s discuss this out the back,” Eve says in her least friendly voice, dragging the struggling woman towards the fitting room with a strength she didn’t know she still had.</p><p>Eve doesn’t feel nothing, this time. Her hands are her own as she pulls the scarf tight, then throws the woman’s head against the heavy change room door. Her muscles burn satisfyingly, and her breaths clear the cobwebs from the neglected depths of her lungs.</p><p>This time it feels really, really <em>good</em>.</p><p> </p><p>÷</p><p> </p><p>The version of Eve who worked that job, Suzy, is disposed of unceremoniously. Her clothes are replaced with a shoplifted ensemble of tortoiseshell sunglasses, pastel pink beret, black knit minidress and wide grey overcoat. She knots her hair up underneath the hat. Selects a pair of grey heeled wedges that force her to modify her gait as she walks.</p><p>At a pharmacy, she pays cash for two boxes: one of hair bleach, the other of violet dye. She lifts eyeliner and lipstick on her way out.</p><p>She follows a man into a twenty-four-hour gym and locks herself in one of its shower rooms. Eve stands in front of its cloudy mirror and breathes—one, two, three long luxuriant inhalations—then gets on with it.</p><p>Nail scissors make reasonably quick, if haphazard, work or her ponytail. Her curls work in her favour here: a few trims and it’s hard to tell how uneven the styling is. She thinks of Villanelle as she knots the severed locks up tightly, wrapping them in toilet paper and jamming them in the sanitary bin. Would Villanelle still think her hair is amazing, now that it sticks out just a few inches from her scalp? Would she still find Eve attractive? Ideally, Eve concludes, Villanelle wouldn’t even recognise her—because if <em>she </em>doesn’t it’s likely nobody will.</p><p>The bleach is definitely not meant for Eve’s hair type. Instead of the gleaming blonde the box promises, it strips her natural colour to a sour orange. The fumes make her a little dizzy in the enclosed space, but she ploughs on—mixes and applies the second lot of dye, and waits for it to turn the copper tones into something more deliberate-looking.</p><p>Eve sits naked on the gym loo with dark liquid dribbling down her neck as she decides it: she is only getting worse at being a good person, digging herself into a hole of misery as she tries—or pretends to try—keeping on the straight and narrow.</p><p>This was never anyone else’s fault. It’s not easier to be better now that she’s free of Carolyn’s machinations or the relentless temptations of Villanelle. On her own, Eve is still an asshole. Still selfish with no impulse control. Still someone who hurts people, even without comforting, legitimising motives for it like justice or the greater good.</p><p>She’s just another not-good person who wants to feel powerful—and really, isn’t it high time she started enjoying the potential perks of being who she’s become?</p><p> </p><p>÷</p><p> </p><p>Without Kenny or MI6 behind her, Eve has no idea how to find the people who order hits. It’s not the type of thing you just Google; anyone advertising that blatantly is going to be bad news. If she were still in contact with Villanelle or Konstantin, even Carolyn…</p><p>But no. She’s not going to beg any of them for work. Not going to give them the chance to laugh or doubt or reprimand her. Eve knows what she’s capable of, but if she wants to capture the attention of the right kinds of people, she’ll need to give them a demonstration. Leave them a sort of… business card. Fortunately, Eve’s spent enough time picking up clues to know how to lay some down.</p><p> </p><p>It isn’t Eve’s first kill, but it’s the first one she’s had the space to premeditate. To plan, rather than reacting to a set of circumstances in the moment. Eve likes the planning; after all, she did it long before she actually thought she could follow through.</p><p>Her target’s name is Sasheen Yahontova, a Russian ex-diplomat connected to North Korea. Eve was part of a team assigned to protect her during her early years at MI5.</p><p><em>Bit of a fuck you to old Sasheen, probably,</em> Bill had suggested when Eve asked him why the fuck they’d assigned <em>her</em>—visibly Korean but audibly American. It had felt like far more of a <em>fuck you </em>to Eve herself. Yahontova had spoken without a filter and treated Eve like a bellboy, and since then only Villanelle has ever provided a stronger incentive for Eve to do the opposite of her job.</p><p>She’d been a good little agent back then, but people grow.</p><p>Now retired, Yahontova lives in Dresden. Eve takes the train—twelve hours from St Pancras via Brussels, Frankfurt and Leipzig. She uses the time for a series of naps, beret pulled down over her eyes. It’s easier to relax when she knows she’s on the move.</p><p>She feels energised by the time she steps up to Yahontova’s front door. The house is modest, although large for just one person. Brick. Surrounded by flat lawn. It’s ten at night but Eve can see the moving lights of a television through the fine living room curtains.</p><p>She knocks.</p><p>Yahontova answers. “<em>Guten Abend</em>,” she croaks, looking up at Eve. Her stature has shrunk this past decade. Eve feels taller than ever.</p><p>“Hi,” she says in English.</p><p>Yahontova narrows her eyes and lifts a knuckly finger to point at Eve, as if to hold her in place. “You are familiar,” she says. “Do not tell me where I saw you; I will remember it.”</p><p>“I really don’t think you will,” says Eve. “I wasn’t exactly in the position to make much of an impression at the time.”</p><p>Yahontova shakes her head. “I never forget a face. Or a favour. This is how you get ahead in the world. Ah, London! You were from… hotel? No, British government! One of their little protective detail, like you could have made any difference if CIA or FSB wanted me dead.”</p><p>She looks smug—and Eve has to admit she’s impressed. To have been not only noticed at the time, but remembered and identified after all these years and all this hairstyling, is genuinely extraordinary.</p><p>“You were never just a diplomat, were you?” she guesses.</p><p>Yahontova’s smile is missing a few teeth. “Why don’t you come in for a drink, Agent Polastri,” she says, opening the wooden door wider with some difficulty.</p><p>Eve resists the urge to take her shoes off. Although she nods in acknowledgement as the old woman lets her in, she isn’t here to be polite. She also doesn’t quite trust the ‘70s Axminster carpet not to be as mouldy as it looks.</p><p>Inside the house is a strange collection of antiques. Doilies are ubiquitous. There are crocheted blankets in garish mustards and crèmes, yellowed wallpaper with subtly embossed pinstripes, lightly rusted metal chairs with olive vinyl cushions for their seats and backs, and a threadbare lounge upholstered in beige floral tapestry.</p><p>There are also guns and knives mounted on the wall above the smouldering fireplace; photographs and newspaper clippings from Vietnam and the Cold War hung framed from the picture rail; half-full bottles of expensive-looking spirits cloaked in dust alongside faded babushka dolls; spidery handwritten letters and sheet music strewn across the dispersed set of glass nesting coffee tables.</p><p>“I am working on a memoir,” Yahontova tells her.</p><p>“Oh?”</p><p>“These are from my days with FSB and Ministry of State Security, before I became a businesswoman.”</p><p>“What business?” Eve won’t be fooled.</p><p>Yahontova laughs. “Smuggling,” she admits readily. “Blackmail. Political secrets.”</p><p>“And this is going in your book?”</p><p>“Most of it.”</p><p>“That’s… bold.”</p><p>“I am an old woman, Agent Polastri. I have lived many lives. This is a book I could not write until I knew I was ready for the end. Have a seat.”</p><p>Eve sits on one of the small, retro chairs. She watches Yahontova retrieve two tumblers and a dusty bottle of vodka. The pour is generous, the hands holding the bottle trembling.</p><p><em>The end. </em>Eve knows very well what that means in the espionage business. “Are you going to do it yourself?” she asks. “Or wait for them to come?”</p><p>Yahontova throws back her drink, coughs roughly, and says, “It will be by my own hand. I will never give them the satisfaction.”</p><p>Eve nods. Untouched, she sets her drink on the table.</p><p>“Why are you here?” the old woman asks. “MI5 cannot want me, or they would not have sent me you.”</p><p>Eve bristles. “I’m not with British intelligence anymore,” she says. “I found you on my own.”</p><p>Yahontova tilts her head. “This does not answer my question,” she replies. “Perhaps… you are working for the Twelve, now?”</p><p>“Warmer, but not by much.”</p><p>Yahontova’s patchy eyebrow twitches. “The Americans?”</p><p>“Does it really matter?” Eve asks, as she reaches into her deep coat pocket. Inside it is an apple.</p><p>“Of course it does.”</p><p>“Okay,” says Eve, biting into the glossy green flesh of the fruit. “You want to know why I’m here? I don’t like you. I hated you ten years ago, and now you just piss me off. That’s it. <em>That’s</em> why you die.”</p><p>Yahontova’s hand goes to her back pocket, but Eve is faster. The bullet buries itself in the old woman’s stomach. Dark blood works fast to dye the worn flannel of her pyjamas, and to fill the deep crinkles of her hands as she clutches at the wound. The second shot, close behind, splinters brittle collarbone. Eve’s ears ring with the sound, but it doesn’t quite mask Yahontova’s rasped speech:</p><p>“<em>Blyat</em>. Fucking bitch.”</p><p>“I thought you said you were ready for the end?”</p><p>“I am ready to die with <em>dignity</em>. With <em>purpose</em>.”</p><p>Eve just smiles and says, “That’s too bad.”</p><p>The headshot is accurate. Close range. Aftermath is messy, although nowhere near Raymond-messy. Eve fits the bitten apple into Yahontova’s withered palm, takes the loaded gun the Russian never got to fire, and searches the place quite successfully for any stashed cash and further conveniently-sized weapons. Then she starts gathering Yahontova’s papers. What looks interesting, she fits into a grocery bag and takes with her. What she doesn’t take, she throws onto the coals.</p><p> </p><p>Eve returns to Berlin for the weeks that follow.</p><p>She waits, going through the stolen documents in the privacy of a small apartment she rents with stolen money. She orders nice food, and buys nice clothes—disguises—and if she’s restless at night she puts some of those nice clothes on and goes to one of the city’s thumping underground clubs.</p><p>Sometimes, tricked by the fatigue, she thinks she sees Bill across a blue-lit dancefloor. She doesn’t go to him, just watches as the strobe stutters on and he’s lost to the shadows once more.</p><p> </p><p>Nothing about Sasheen Yahontova shows up in the news.</p><p>This is how Eve knows the kill has been noticed by the right people.</p><p> </p><p>÷</p><p> </p><p>The knife glides along neatly just above the eyes. Eve takes the detached head and presses it inside out. Black runs down her fingers towards the heel of her hand. Octopuses are smart, Eve muses, quickly snipping through the parts where the entrails attach to the outer skin of the head. They’re escape artists. Learners. Hunters. Eve removes the hard beak from the lower half of the octopus’ body, sections the tentacles and then washes the soft white pieces.</p><p>It's different, working here as a cover. The fact Eve can <em>choose </em>to assimilate herself into the kitchen environment so seamlessly makes her feel <em>powerful</em>.</p><p>Her target isn’t part of the large function taking place downstairs, but his stay at the hotel is perfectly timed. Eve waits in the kitchen until she sees the female companion he’d arrived with making her way out through the back doors leading straight into the car park, then waits another few minutes until it’s time to serve mains out on the floor: all hands on deck rushing plates and bowls and refills of water and prosecco onto tables.</p><p>She loads a plate of grilled octopus and a salad onto a room service tray and disappears without another word. Cutlery. And a chef’s knife, folded underneath the large fabric serviette.</p><p>The room is 304. Eve keeps her head down as she walks along the corridor, and is about to knock when the door to 304 swings open. A woman backs out with a trolley, turning away so Eve can only see her black ponytail and the efficient sway of her hips as she leaves. There’s something…</p><p>Eve shakes away the distraction. Reaches the door, finally, and knocks before using her stolen staff key.</p><p>Inside is—</p><p>Mr Davis, lying on the floor, face down. Eve’s target, dead before she and her octopus pieces even arrived.</p><p>It clicks.</p><p>She yells down the hall—<em>wait!</em>—but, true to form, the Ghost has already vanished.</p><p>Knowing the building’s exits, Eve makes an educated guess. It won’t be the carpark, because there are cameras in the lot, and the Ghost wouldn’t place her car at the scene anyway. It won’t be the main entrance to the party, because her cover is definitely <em>staff</em> and Eve knows all staff have been told to come and go from the event through alternate doorways. That leaves the busy kitchen entrance, and a smaller door out through the laundry which Eve had planned to use herself. Located in the basement, the laundry is four levels down. Jin’s trolley stands neatly parked by the service elevator, so Eve dumps the octopus dish there and tries her luck with the stairs.</p><p>The fire escape is a cold concrete tunnel downwards, all edges and corners. A metal handrail coils at its centre, like a strand of DNA covered in chipped grey paint. Eve’s footsteps aren’t even that heavy, yet they clatter off every surface as she descends. Holding the railing, Eve leapfrogs over a set of six stairs, landing to landing. It’s fast, but the slab comes up to meet her without mercy; Eve’s knee joints, among other parts of her, aren’t twenty-six anymore. She descends the remaining flights at more reasonable two-step intervals.</p><p>Easing the heavy fire door shut behind her, Eve slips around the corner and into the laundry, crouching behind a row of machines. It’s hot and humid despite the basement location, and she holds her arm in front of her mouth to stifle the panting sound of her breath. There’s someone else moving around behind her—a tall, heavy-set person who is certainly not Jin—but they pay Eve no mind as she lies in wait.</p><p>When Jin enters, Eve steps out—placing herself between the Ghost and the exit.</p><p>“Hello,” she says levelly.</p><p>“<em>No</em>.”</p><p>Of every manager and colleague and customer, every man knocking past her on the street or cramping her space on the bus, every bartender who looks right through her to the younger, whiter faces—of all of them, it’s <em>Jin </em>who is smart enough to be afraid. Jin, who understands what Eve is.</p><p>“Yes,” she counters simply.</p><p>Jin throws a look to their silent companion, who still shows no sign of caring about the confrontation happening nearby. In Korean: “MI6 promised not to—”</p><p>“I’m not with MI6 anymore. How about we walk and talk.”</p><p>It is not a question.</p><p> </p><p>÷</p><p> </p><p>“What do you want?”</p><p>The sound of the busy restaurant covers their conversation. Besides that, Eve’s hungry.</p><p>“It’s not actually the killing, for you, is it?” she asks. “You really just do it because you have the skills, and you need the money.”</p><p>Jin nods suspiciously, picking up a dumpling but not biting into it. “I am not like <em>her</em>. That is what you mean.”</p><p>“I’m not with her anymore either. But yes, that’s part of what I mean.”</p><p>Tilting her head, she surveys Eve. “<em>You </em>are like her,” she concludes. “I guessed that when we first met.”</p><p>Eve shrugs. The way she sees it, she’s like herself these days more than anybody else. She is Eve, thief of forbidden knowledge. The proverbial cat. Eve, who let death into the garden.</p><p>“Have you ever considered blackmail?” she asks. “Professionally, I mean.”</p><p>“Do you mean stalking cheating husbands and wives to find leverage? No. What I do is more final. Pays better.”</p><p>“What about governments?” Eve watches for the shift in her face as she comes to understand. “What if someone had decades of cover-ups and dirty state secrets to work with? Names of active operatives and a long history of double agents—British, Russian, American, Chinese, North Korean. Intelligence on war crimes that definitely undermines the official stories. Corrupt politicians, nuclear deals the UN wouldn’t like if they heard about them—and maybe a bit of MI6’s dirty laundry to top it off? There’s money in that—probably more than in the killing. Would you prefer it?”</p><p>“And be targeted by every government in the world?”</p><p>“Only if they find out it’s you—and you had nothing to do with gathering the information. With careful correspondence and the right setup, there’s no reason they should ever trace it back to you. You’d never have to be at a scene.”</p><p>Jin finally takes a bite of the dumpling. “Who are you recruiting for?”</p><p>Eve leans in, looks at her intently. “Nobody. I’m proposing a mutually beneficial relationship. I have information someone could put to very good use. You have an in to contract killing, and I want contacts.”</p><p>
  
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  <strong>Epilogue: Full Circle</strong>
</p><p>The trouble is that the earth is round. Start walking, and in roughly forty thousand kilometres you’ll be back where you began. That breaks down to only twenty thousand kilometres each. Ten thousand before they stopped walking away and started walking towards each other again.</p><p>Eve’s in a hotel bar in Copenhagen, of all places, an overpriced Negroni washing down the memory of her last hit. London, three days ago. A moustachioed man of sixty, wrists furnished with a Rolex and Bvlgari cufflinks. In a fit of creativity Eve had removed them, placed them over his empty eyes like Ancient Greek coins. Pressed them in with her thumbs until they stuck. It had felt something like hand-stuffing the seed into a lychee. The watch, she’d stuffed into his once-screaming mouth. She hadn’t needed to steal any of it; his taste was garish and she was paid handsomely enough these days.</p><p>And speaking of handsome—</p><p>—someone slides into the tall chair beside hers at the bar. A tall, slender woman with a hat on who’s found Eve at precisely the right time.</p><p>“Hello,” the visitor says, still faced away as she hangs her coat and adjusts her position on the seat.</p><p>It only takes the one word: Eve shivers with her whole body.</p><p>“Villanelle?” she asks, not that it’s a question: sitting next to her is the woman she walked away from many months ago.</p><p>She looks the same, and different. In the low light her irises look warmer, browner than Eve remembers.</p><p>Villanelle looks at Eve like she didn’t even mean to find her. Eve supposes that, from the back, she doesn’t look like she once did. Her hair is shoulder-length and auburn-tinged—professionally styled, now. Her black sheath dress is Dolce and Gabbana, the crème wool coat slung over the chair-back behind her Gucci. Still Villanelle’s type, then.</p><p>“Eve,” she says with a burst of laughter that sounds dry and disbelieving. “What are the odds, hm? And it is just Oksana, now. That is what you should call me.”</p><p>Eve’s eyebrows telegraph her surprise, but she doesn’t comment. Instead: “I probably need a new name, then. A code name for who I’ve been lately.”</p><p>“Want to brainstorm?” Oksana offers a small smile and motions the bartender for another drink. “You must have some sort of idea.”</p><p>Eve shakes her head. “Nothing that could ever be a match for <em>Villanelle</em>. God, you’re a hard act to follow.”</p><p>“I know,” says Oksana, “but you have a history of exceeding people’s expectations. Even mine.”</p><p>Eve detects an edge of bitterness. Nothing as simple as jealousy or anger or grief, it’s a wistful, complex sentiment that pairs well with her gin and tonic. They are old enemies-turned-colleagues, allies, friends, enablers. Old flames surveying the cooled ashes of past lives.</p><p>“What are you doing here?” Eve asks, noticing herself moving closer. Magnetised, always.</p><p>“Just living my life,” Oksana answers vaguely. “Being normal. Or I was, until now.”</p><p>“And what now?”</p><p>“Now we are going to ruin it all.”</p><p> </p><p>Eve has a room at the hotel.</p><p>Oksana doesn’t volunteer anything about where she’s staying—hell, maybe she lives in Copenhagen now. Eve could ask a thousand questions, but she opts instead to push Oksana down into the cushy mattress and hold her there.</p><p>They’re naked, skin-to-skin, further than they ever made it before. Oksana darts up to kiss her, fervent and longing.</p><p>Eve tears her mouth away to trace a path down Oksana’s neck instead, crossing the lines of her collarbones and climbing the smooth hills of her breasts. She tongues a nipple, blows over the wetness left behind and watches the way goosebumps rise across Oksana’s chest. When Oksana’s hands find their way into Eve’s hair they don’t pull. Undemanding, they rest there reverently, nails occasionally scratching pleasantly over her scalp.</p><p>She makes lovely noises, especially when Eve finally seals her mouth over her clit. Eve sucks hard, bites softly, burrows her tongue inside Oksana and barely even stops for breath until she’s coming. For her trouble she gets a moan, a muffled cry, a… sniffle?</p><p>“Are you okay?” Eve wipes her mouth and looks up to see Oksana with an arm thrown across her face.</p><p>“Yes,” she grumbles wetly.</p><p>“You’re crying. That doesn’t scream <em>okay </em>to me.”</p><p>The arms come down. Oksana scowls, pink-faced: “If you’d already decided, why did you <em>ask</em>? For your information, I am fine. It’s just…a lot. After all this time.”</p><p>Eve sits back on her heels and thinks, messy hands absently stroking the insides of Oksana’s thighs (which seems to soothe her, although she remains indignant).</p><p>It <em>is </em>a lot, getting what you want. The ultimate climax, or anticlimax.</p><p><em>Was it everything you imagined? </em>she doesn’t ask. This, too, is already decided. She scoots around and lies down opposite Oksana. She’s so young, and sad, and beautiful, all glassy-eyed and messy-haired. Eve stares and tries in vain to recognise her the way she had when they first lay down together.</p><p>“You should have it,” Oksana says suddenly.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“<em>Villanelle</em>. It is a very good code name; you should have it. My gift to you.”</p><p>Eve chuckles as the realisation washes over her. “You’ve given me more than that.”</p><p>Oksana wipes at her eyes with the heel of her hand. “Some I gave,” she grants. “You took the rest.”</p><p>“I’m sorry.”</p><p>“No, Villanelle,” Oksana cups Eve’s cheek with a soft hand. Considers her lips as if she means to kiss her again, but smiles sadly instead. “Neither of us can fool ourselves anymore.”</p>
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